New troops at US border, but the task is vast
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SAN DIEGO AND ALTAR, MEXICO –
Spc. Anthony Maielli of the National Guard is posted in the back of a pickup truck, parked on a San Diego hill called Arnie's Point. He points the lens of a giant infrared scope, which will allow him to see when darkness falls, south over the US-Mexican border.
"We're here to be another set of eyes and ears for the border patrol," says the guardsman. He is one of 4,500 reinforcements who have arrived since mid-May to help seal the 1,920-mile swath of the land stretching from the Pacific Ocean to the Gulf of Mexico. His role: Spot illegal border-crossers and alert the border patrol.
Four hundred miles east and 150 miles south into Mexico, the former mayor of Altar - a dusty nexus for northern-bound migrants from Mexico, Central America, and South America - sums up his view of the US buildup with a shrug.
"If they stood shoulder to shoulder, we would fight our way through the gap between them," says Francisco Garcia Arten, now a migrant activist, his tone more matter-of-fact than defiant. "And if they built a wall 50-feet high, we would bring ladders that were 51 feet."
Both sides in the long controversy over illegal immigration know the drill. US determination to prevent unauthorized entry by building walls and adding agents is met by an equal determination to get around them.
Since the advent of Operation Gatekeeper in San Diego in 1994, America has seen Operation Rio Grande (1998) in south Texas and Operation Safeguard (2002) in Arizona. With President Bush's Operation Jump Start, which aims to deploy as many as 6,000 National Guard troops to the four border states, the total number of US enforcement personnel on the southern border will be at least 15,000 - four times what it was in 1994.
The question now is, will this latest US crackdown be enough?
In more than two dozen interviews along the border from San Diego to Altar, a common sentiment emerges: Twelve years of stepped-up border enforcement has not stopped illegal immigration from Mexico, and this latest effort seems poised to repeat the familiar pattern of action and reaction.
Even eager enforcers - like National Guard Sgt. Miguel Mendoza of California, who volunteered to serve on the border after seeing Mr. Bush announce Operation Jump Start in May - are awed by the enormity of the challenge. "You don't really understand what the border patrol is up against until you get out here and see this terrain," he says.
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The view from the border differs markedly from the view in Washington, where border patrol Chief David Aguilar on Tuesday offered his first assessment of the impact of the National Guard's contribution. His summation: It's helping - a lot.
Comparing the 69 days since Bush unveiled Operation Jump Start with the 69 days that preceded it, Mr. Aguilar said "our apprehensions are down by 45 percent." The border patrol sees that drop-off as a good thing - as an indication that fewer crossings are being attempted. Some of the decrease can be attributed to summertime, when sun and burning deserts act as natural deterrents to border-crossers, he acknowledged, but not all of it. "The downward trend is, in fact, positive, it's real, and it's impacting."
Since October, overall apprehensions are down 2 percent, Aguilar reported.
Quantifying the Guard's impact is difficult, because the soldiers and airmen are not permitted to apprehend illegal immigrants. They play a supporting role - manning computers and checkpoints, building roads, lighting, and fences. But the border patrol offers this evidence:
• The Guard presence has allowed 250 border patrol agents to move from "nondirect enforcement duty" to the border, Aguilar said.
• National Guard personnel have spotted 1,557 border-crossers, resulting in apprehensions by border agents, says Xavier Rios, a border patrol spokesman in Washington.
• They have played a part in seizing 50 vehicles, 13,278 pounds of marijuana, and 201 pounds of cocaine, says Mr. Rios.
Those who have watched the immigration debate for years take the statistics with a certain grain of salt. They note that the border patrol plays it both ways, claiming to be an effective deterrent when apprehensions are down and an effective law enforcer when apprehensions are up.
"This buildup is not decreasing migration at all," adds Katherine Rodriguez of Derechos Humanos. "Claims by the US border patrol that this increased manpower does have an effect fits a pattern in which they implement some new strategy or idea when there is already a natural lull in migrant activity and then claim credit for it."
The one thing that can be said of the long US effort to curtail illegal immigration, they say, is that it has made crossing the border more dangerous.
Continued on Page 2
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THE US-MEXICO BORDER:
At left, San Diego lies to the left of the fence, and Tijuana, Mexico, is on the right. The National Guard is helping to buttress the border here by helping to build a second fence. At right, Senior US border patrol agent Efren Burciaga, Jr. points out areas in Tijuana, Mexico, to National Guard troops.
ROBERT HARBISON
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